by Revista Espíritu | 143-2012
In this communication we propose to clarify the notion of virtue from the Thomistic metaphysics of esse. That is why our reflection will start from the texts of Aquinas. Although a critical historical study of the sources and evolution of the concepts of virtue and virtus essendi in Saint Thomas would surely help us to have a broader perspective, we apologize for taking this path here since it would require a greater development than we can realize in this headquarters. We will then limit ourselves to the doctrinal development, which is the most fundamental, without prejudice to other studies completing the ideas outlined here. The metaphysical deepening in the concept of virtue is of special importance, not only for the development of this discipline, but also for the usefulness of theology and for illumination from the first philosophy of the second philosophies referred to man, his personality and his act.
by Revista Espíritu | 143-2012
Less than a year ago, on June 25, Juan Berchmans Vallet de Goytisolo died in Madrid at the age of 94, after a fruitful life in the field of law and Catholic thought. He was born in Barcelona on February 21, 1917, he studied baccalaureate at the school of Nª Sª de la Bonanova in Barcelona, married since 1945 with Teresa Regí, had seven children. Law degree in 1939, he obtained the opposition of Notaries in 1942. As a notary, he exercised successively in Torroella de Montgrí, Malgrat, Arucas, Logroño and acceded to Madrid by opposition in 1949 where he developed his activity until the time of his retirement, in 1987 .
by Revista Espíritu | 143-2012
Vita brevis, pro dolor. “Realitas”, inter tot et tam dispares philosophorum doctrinas, ubi reperienda est? Ut naves enim, cunctae scholae, anchora levata, portam veritatis petentes, naufragaverunt in scopulis scepticismi vel relativismi. Quinque saltem navigationes sic perierunt: Praesocratici in cavillatione Sophistarum, Plato atque Aristoteles in scepticismo Academicorum, philosophi Medii Aevi in dubitatione Montani atque anti-Scholasticorum, Cartesius et Locke in negationibus Humii, Kant demum in misologia Post-Moderna.
by Revista Espíritu | 143-2012
Aristotle and Aquinas considered relation to have a reality in the world of being independent of awareness. Poinsot took the step of identifying relation as the only positive mode of being which retains its essential character as suprasubjective both when circumstances render it existing in the awareness-independent dimension of being (ens reale) and when circumstances reduce the relation to an awareness-dependent status (ens rationis). Poinsot further demonstrated that this singularity of relation being is what makes the action of signs possible in the world of nature. Cardinal Ratzinger in our own time pointed out that the being of person, as a matter of personal identity, depends upon this being of relation. The human person is not simply a “supposit of a rational nature” but much further an identity developed in time through relationships. Ratzinger’s work combines with the semiotic understanding of Poinsot to point us toward a postmodern understanding which at once re-trieves (in Heidegger’s sense) the medieval understanding of the “type of substance” required for human personhood and at the same time shows how the identity of persons is more than that, requiring the suprasubjective or public dimension which relation adds within the psyche as an actual “personal identity” develops over time
by Revista Espíritu | 143-2012
The work of Ricoeur, Temps et récit (three volumes, published between 1983- 1985) is one of his major works about the philosophy of history. This workis studied in this article to verify whether it is a philosophy of history and, above all, to deepen on the author’s thought about this important subject. The terms of the title, time and story, are already revealing its contents, and beside these two categories of a possible dialectic can be considered, namely, the present and the eternity.
by Revista Espíritu | 143-2012
In the current paper, we try to show that what we use to call “phenomenology”, precisely in the sense evolved by Heidegger in Sein und Zeit, doesn’t represent in any way an “innovation” of contemporary philosophy, but it brings back, in certain way, to the very origin of philosophy in Plato’s thought. We will focus on some cardinal passages of the Sophist in which the orientation of the act of philosophizing it is depicted as phenomenology, that is, as the search and manifestation, at the light of the word, of the being of beings: ζητεῖν καὶ ἐμ-φανίζειν λόγῳ τí ποτ᾽ἔστι. Finally, the paper will attempt to point how Plato assumed and took charge of such a task in its most radical way, risking his thinking to the point of all questioning: in the question for the sense of the being itself
by Revista Espíritu | 143-2012
This article aims to determine the possibility of including in the extension of the voluntas ut natura’s concept (as expressed by Aquinas when formally and specifically deals with this issue) some acts of the will arising from a consummate virtue. In order to analyze this problem we consider the relation between judgement by inclination, voluntas ut natura and virtue
by Revista Espíritu | 143-2012
It is an authentic Saint Thomas Aquinas’ thought —and sometimes forgotten— that contemplative act consists on knowledge and love. To properly understand this thesis is necessary to examine the nature of love and the differentiation of its different types following the footsteps of Aquinas, and we do it from the “good is diffusive of itself ” principle, which means it communicates its own perfection. This process of differentiation of the types of love from this principle allows us to identify the self-giving love or giving of oneself as the most perfect one, because it is the one that best directs the union with the friend. But we argue that this friendly union is achieved by the interplay of one’s life among friends, so that this union is resolved in a contemplative act which necessarily involve knowledge and love. This helps us understand not only the preeminent place of contemplation in the order of human friendship, but even the man who is called by grace to live fully with God, that is, the loving contemplation of divine good.
by Revista Espíritu | 143-2012
Finite ens, in the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas, is characterized by two immanent compositions: that of the act of being with the essence and that of the substance and its accidents, which are ordered or “finalized” to operation. Subsequently, the transcendent foundation of ens shows that esse, essence and operation manifest respectively the efficient, exemplary and final causal action of God the Creator on his creatures. This investigation seeks to explain why and how the act of being that is received by the essence necessarily requires operation as its ultimate expansion. The result is that the participation of created ens in Esse per essentiam is ultimately operative, and not merely static, and is properly expressed by means of the triad esse, essentia, operatio, where the last word means the tendency to act
by Revista Espíritu | 144-2012
The course 2011-2012 was the seventy-third in the history of the Balmesiana Foundation, and its journey will be for the memory very significant events that should be remembered.
by Revista Espíritu | 144-2012
On May 18, 2012, Fray Abelardo Lobato, O.P., member of the Scientific Council of Espíritu magazine, died in the Dominican convent of Our Lady of the Rosary of Cádiz.
by Revista Espíritu | 144-2012
Those of us who have had the privilege of listening to Dr. Canals countless times, can still remember with enthusiasm his lecture series focused on the core issues of Catholic thought. Perhaps one of the most complex and compromising issues that used to be addressed were those versed in the theology of history. He used to say that in order to understand it one had to study more theology than history and his fear was that the listeners of his lectures, talks or conversations would interpret his teachings superficially. He also shied away from visionary listeners eager for eschatological “news”. Canals recalled frequently that passage of the Apocalypse in which Saint John must swallow a book that produces a terrible bitterness. This is the bitterness of those who start in this knowledge and have nothing to do with the curiositas. For this reason, feeling about these issues was framed in the Apostleship of Prayer and the devotion of the Sacred Heart. Canals had written that when they asked Father Orlandis, his teacher, why he trained his young people in the theology of history, he answered that in order to train good guardians of the Apostleship of Prayer. Everything that went away from this intention would have perverted the teachings received.
by Revista Espíritu | 144-2012
The article attempts to show the hope, according to the thought of san Bonaventure, about a plenitude of the Church, which is none other than the Kingdom of God in the world inside the limits of the history. It will also address the issue to show that this doctrine is not anything isolated in the Tradition of the Church, but that it follows a continuous line with the opinion if the majority of the Holy Fathers
by Revista Espíritu | 144-2012
The following paper aims to approach to two works which, apparently are different on time, content and purpose such as The City of God, by St. Ausgustine and The End of the Modern World by Romano Guardini. Throughout the article, we will prove the proximity between both works as well as their authors
by Revista Espíritu | 144-2012
The arguments used by Saint Augustine in his theoretical and practical discourse, against ancient paganism (especially against those arguments put forward by Celsus and Porphyry) are useful in part for the challenges nowadays embodied in the so-called neopaganism (and its leading intellectuals such as De Benoist or Augé). In this article a distinction is made in the Augustinian reaction between aspects relating to pagan cult and those relating to ‘dogmatic’ content. In the latter case, the multiform, inconsistent and unsystematic theology of ancient paganism reappears today as a pluralistic, sacralizing and superstitious attitude, tinged in some author’s writings as politically correct multiculturalism. In the former case, the pagan cult reappears in the form of cultural policies that are tolerant towards any apparently religious phenomena such as Satanism and Halloween. Saint Augustine’s message for the man of today and yesterday is clear: the syncretism which is latent in every pagan attitude or idea is wholly incompatible with the due reverence for faith in God the Creator.
by Revista Espíritu | 144-2012
This paper points to the perennial value of Saint Augustine’s reflection on the Two Cities and their struggle. First, the article underlines some conflicts in that historical moment –both in Rome and in the Church-. Some notes of the Ancient World mentality and its crash with the new ideals of the Christian faith are suggested as causes of those conflicts. In a second step, the article focuses on some key points of Augustine’s theology and political theory, such as the influence his own experience had in his worldview, the finding out of the ordoamoris as a metaphysics of existence and the needful consequence of setting the love of God as the very basis of civilization. Finally, as a projection of Saint Augustine’s thought to our time, the article reflects on the need of generating creative minority groups, of joining together the vision of faith and the vision of reality, and of working in charity
by Revista Espíritu | 144-2012
The principle of the unity of mankind, stemming from its unity in origin from a single individual and from its unity in the salvation design, has been a constant element in the understanding that the Church has about man, from early Christian literature until our day. Such unity consecrates a bond among men which is totally unique in as much as it renders them all solidary in the use of freedom by allowing the communication of guilt and merit. Saint Augustine’s works contain elements which greatly help in the understanding of this mystery of unity among men
by Revista Espíritu | 144-2012
Saint Augustine studied the question of evil and he found an answer from the Christian point of view, mainly against the solution which the Manichean dualism gave to it. Looking for the Truth, he completed the Platonic conception of evil as a privation of good and he understood that moral evil has its origin in the sin, in a bad use of the free agency by the rational creature. A good or a bad election is the cause of consequences for social human life and it is the genesis of two cities: the city of God and the mundane city
by Revista Espíritu | 145-2013
Here are the publications of the year 2012 in the Hispanic field inspired by Thomism, either by following it or by answering it. Its source is the Bibliographia Thomistica database -published on the Corpus Thomisticum website- on April 30, 2013.
by Revista Espíritu | 145-2013
The new book of the prominent Spanish philosopher, founder and President of the Spanish Association and the Ibero-American Association of Personalism, Juan Manuel Burgos: Introduction to personalism (brief: Introduction), deserves a deeper analysis than we can present here, but we can not Keep quiet about this precious book for the simple reason that we can not talk enough about it.
